Don't Fear the DARK
by Painsake
Summary: I can't say what is in the dark but, I, for once, know that it is all in my head. I'll let you in on why I no longer fear the dark. This is a nightmare i had after watching nightmare on elm street
1. Don't Fear the DARK

** Don't Fear the _DARK_**

_ for the sake of the pain._

**T**here is nothing in the dark to fear, yet, we still do. What is it about the dark that frightens us, and why is it gone when the light turns on? I can't say what is in the dark but, I, for once, know that it is all in my head. I'll let you in on why I no longer fear the dark.

**H**e woke suddenly. There was no reason for him to wake. Fumbling in the dark for the lamp on his bedside table, it didn't work. The light didn't come on. The cold sweat that had accumulated while he slept began anew.

"Why am I sweating?" He asked out loud. "No problem," as if saying it would cast off an unease. "I'll just flip the bedroom light on."

He threw off his blanket and leaned towards the edge of the bed – which gave an eerie groan. He swung his legs over the side to another groan.

But this one didn't come from the bed!

His heart, now in his throat, was beating as to wake the entire neighborhood. He needed to hear. _Is there somebody in the house?_ He strained to hear. _What was that!?_ A low whistling, _it had to be the wind._

He stood, squinting now, to see through the dark. Black, there was nothing but black. He found himself wishing for a flashlight. He could find his way though. He knew where every piece of furniture in the house was.

He tried to step forward. His foot wouldn't move. He made it move, Taking each step as if his feet were dead weight. He reached the door. The light switch, _where is it?_ He found it. He flipped it. Blackness.

There was a rustling sound. He jerked his head to the doorway. _What was that?_ It rustled again. _What was it?_

He stepped into the hall. A shiver went up his spine as his bare foot left the carpet and touched the cold tile floor.

He could only hear the pounding of his heart. He took another step. The floor creaked under his foot. He held his breath. His heart was the only sound he could hear. BUMBUMP BUMBUMP BUMBUMP.

He continued walking, on his toes, as though the floor was made of eggshells, until he reached the part of the hall just under the light. Slowly he reached up and clasped the tiny chain like a life line. Nothing happened. There wasn't even a speckle of light. He pulled it again. Still, there was no light. _It's okay, _he thought, _maybe the powers just out. _But his breathing still quickened.

He squinted in to the dark of the living room. Blackness.

There was a flashlight in the 3rd drawer in the kitchen cabinet. _Could the batteries be dead?_ He asked himself, _No! I just changed them two days ago. That's it. I'll just go to the kitchen and get the flashlight. _He was decided, and walked slowly out of the hall and into the living room.

BUMBUMP BUMBUMP BUMBUMP. He desperately wished his heart wasn't so loud, as he made his way around the coffee table. – The coffee table was moved into the walkway! – Someone or thing had been in the living-room! BUMMBUMP BUMBUMP BUMBUMP. _Could anybody else hear it?_ He worried._ I just hope there isn't anybody else still in here _to_ hear it!_ He just passed the couch. He was almost to the kitchen. **_BUMBUMP_** BUMBUMP **_BUMBUMP_** BUMBUMP **_BUMBUMP_** BUMBUMP.

_WAIT A SECOND!_ He was hearing two heartbeats! _A nightmare. _He was having a nightmare._ That has got to be it._

He made it to the kitchen. The second heartbeat was getting stronger. But was it in front of him or behind him? He couldn't tell!

He walked slowly, step by step, until he reached the counter. Tensing up, it felt as though the air was getting thicker; denser, like water. It was hard to breath. The third drawer, the flashlight was kept in it. The second heartbeat seemed to be coming from every direction. _What is going on? Where is that heartbeat coming from?_

He found the flashlight and closed the drawer. It shut with a slam. His breath caught in his throat. He fumbled, and dropped the flashlight.

Quickly, he went to his hands and knees to find it. Feeling his way around the floor until his hand touched something. Something wet. There was an oozy, wet, substance covering the floor, and the flashlight was in it. He picked up the oozing flashlight and turned it on.

A circle of light appeared on the ceiling. Half of the circle however was orange and blurred. Rising to his feet he pointed the light toward the floor. It flickered. Then it went out.

He only saw a mere glimpse of it, but a glimpse was enough. Blood! The floor was covered in blood! _It just couldn't be. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Whose was it? _

He was so shocked that he had to remind himself to breath. He had been holding his breath since the flashlight came on. _The flashlight! The batteries are dead!_

He whipped around and dug in the drawer, searching frantically for more batteries. There weren't any in it._ Where are they? _He thought, mentally searching his house for whatever batteries he had. _My alarm clock, there are back up batteries in it._

He didn't care now, if someone heard him. Throwing caution into the wind, he ran. He would run straight to his room.

The heartbeat, he didn't know whether it was following him. _It is just as loud, it must be. _Running made noise. He ran faster anyway, until he got to his room. Finally there, he slowed, and stooped at his bedside table.

His breaths came in quick and heavy gasps. Grabbing the alarm clock, he pounded it on his open palm. The two batteries popped out, one in his hand, and the other bounced under the table, where he snatched it up.

As he unscrewed the light off the flashlight his breathing slowed. Not much, but just enough so that he could hear the rasping, breathing behind him.

He dumped the dead batteries on the floor. His shaking hands replaced them with the new ones. He screwed on the light cap, and stood. He then turned around, pointed the flashlight, and turned it on.

**I** bolted out of my bed, wide awake this time. I ran through the house, turning on every light in the house. Then, I wrapped up in my quilt and crawled underneath my bed. Ironically that was, now, the darkest place in the house, after turning on all the lights.

I wasn't afraid of the dark, but what might be in it. There was nothing in my closet or under my bed. And no boogie man was out to get me. But, in the dark I would not be able to see that. We are by nature afraid of the unknown. And it is the fear of what is unseen that hides in the dark. It could be the boogie man, and if I knew, I would grab my dagger and taunt him. But, when you don't know, how can you ebb the fear? Well, that's what I get for watching the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' series after midnight.


	2. I Experienced Nuclear War

**I Experienced _Nuclear War_**

_For the Sake of Pain_

* * *

It began with a field trip.

Me and many of my classmates, though they were no one I recognized, I knew they were my classmates. I over heard some of the teens in my class arguing over who was tougher. I thought to myself, 'tough guys don't need to convince people.'

We were at a hotel, several stories high, and gathered in one room on the west side of the building.

As the instructor spoke to us, I looked out the window and ignored him. I was thinking 'I've heard it all before.'

Then _it_ happened.

There was an explosion to the North of the building, far enough that all we felt was a large tremor in the building.

Everyone was asking, "What was that? And what happened?"

But I had been looking out the window when it happened. And for a moment, all I could do was stare.

I could see the giant billowing clouds that rose far in the distance. I _knew_ what it had been.

It was a nuclear war head! I could tell by how its aftermath shaped itself.

I saw a streak westward in the sky and knew it was another one coming down.

I turned to shout, to tell everyone this one was closer and would be worse. But what ever I did get out was lost in the sonic boom of the blast.

The shock wave hit. The air was knocked out of me. I had been in mid stride, so my feet were not connected with the floor. I was lifted up and flung through the air.

I could hear nothing but a rolling thunder, vibrating inside my head. And I felt the pressure of the building rise. The air was thickened to the point that it would not re-enter my lungs.

My skin tingled and the hair on my body stood. It seemed as though all of this were happening in slow motion.

I felt myself turn and saw out the window. **It** _was_ **giant**! It had to have landed miles away, but in my view, it was still several feet wide from the distance. Like a car that is across the football field appears to be only a foot long. Yet the blast was still gigantic.

I twisted, so that when I hit the wall it would be with my shoulder. I hit, and dropped to my knees. The earth settled.

My head was still ringing, but I didn't wait. There would be more.

I began shouting, for I knew they could only here me if I did.

I told them to get up and try to remain calm. That wasn't the last of them and we needed to get lower in the building.

The next one hit. To the southeast. The ground shook but it was farther away, and the impact was less substantial.

I grabbed some of the teens, who I had over heard arguing, and commanded them to tell the people in other rooms that there had been several explosions across town, no reason to start a rush of suicide, but we should still remain calm and make your way down to the basement. And don't use the elevator, stay on the stairwell.

With that I headed down, leaping the stairs four or five at a time, until I got to the ground floor. I then grabbed a helper and told her to go and open the basement.

She said she didn't know where it was, or that there even was one. Apparently I had been curious about the building's architecture and had acquired the blueprints for it.

So I seemed to know where it was. And, I knew it would hold, unless we were directly in range, but then it wouldn't matter. Our only hope was that the next wasn't on top of us.

I told her where to find it and then went to the main office. I saw people curled around each other crying and telling them they're sorry. And one who had busted open the vending machine and was now scarfing down his last meal.

I knew he had seen it too. But I made use of him any way. I told him to stop stuffing his face and to go lock up all of the elevators so no one could get trapped in them.

He paused as though he were trying to figure out what I was saying. I tilted my head and ask if candy bars really were the last thing he wanted to eat.

He seemed frightened by what I had said, and ran to the bottom elevator locked it and went fleeing up the stairs.

I turned to the rest of the staff and told them to gather all the help they could and then go maintain order on the stairs. "We don't want people shoving down in a panic."

At this point, I realized that I was giving orders and they actually listened. Yet I didn't think twice. At that moment I had a job to do. I went to the basement and found it opened.

I told the people in there to stay calm and try to calm any one else who came down. People would be upset but we could not afford any hysteria.

In that moment, the thing I wanted most was to stay down there, in the basement, curl up and prey. Pray that the world wasn't ended, that I wasn't watching the end of my race, and that I never had to see the Apocalypse.

However, I mentally told myself not to be so cowardly. There were other people making the same prayers at that moment. And they needed to be moved down here.

With the decision made I was running back up the stairs. I would start on the top floor and make my way down, checking every room for stragglers.

On my way up I picked out some of those going down, ones that looked like they were past the shock and still had their heads on.

I picked them like horses for a race, picking only the lean ones that I could tell were fast.

I spoke to them, telling them that they had to check the floors to make sure no one was still in their rooms.

As they took me in, the way I dressed didn't matter, my blue hair wasn't noticed. They took in my calm and hard face; they saw the cold heat in my eyes.

It didn't matter that I was just a stranger; because what did matter was the determination I carried myself with. They followed.

As I woke I felt like I would puke up my stomach. And for several minutes I just sat there trying not to get ill. My mind didn't comprehend what I just went through. Finally I realized where I was and felt myself borderline hysteria. My stomach was still convulsing and my head still ringing.

But over it all was a sense of loss. For the people who died, even though I told my self it didn't happen. I wanted to grieve.

I made my way to the restroom in case I couldn't calm my stomach. And as I waited for relief, I felt a little accomplished. If that were real, then I doubt I would have regretted my decision.


	3. This don't BUG me

**This don't **_**BUG**_** me**

_For the Sake of Pain_

* * *

This time my vivid dream seems to be a cross of two movies; the movie 'Infestation' and 'The Scorpion king,' with a touch of the 'Eureka 7'cartoon.

Known Fact: Insect type aliens invaded Earth. It was a mass swarm invasion taking most of the planet in the initial assault.

Many of our race fall victim, becoming food for the creatures and many more were stung.

Thing is, once you are stung, most of the time your life is over, either by your own hand or the hands of your loved ones. You see, when a human is stung they are mutated into a mindless drone, a slave to the aliens.

However, instead of being stung, _I_ was left intact and forced to care for an almost human infant.

Their next queen!

I learned much about the insects as I did this. I learned there were five colonies: one on North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Each Colony is like a nation and in each nation would be classes, and races.

With human slaves at the bottom of the class that holds them, they were being kept as pets, slaves, and livestock.

I learned that they move from planet to planet, leaving a planet just before it dies or is destroyed.

Each planet has its own generation of Queen. And they are born with the dominant traits of the planet they land on.

That queen's life ends shortly after the destruction of the planet. They will live long enough to find a new planet and harvest the dominant species there to make the next Queen.

The Queen is like the mother, She only has the ability to give birth to a certain amount of breeder bugs, and they turn around and give birth to which ever races are in need, be it worker, soldier, landscaper or any other.

And, with the new Queens' dominant traits being passed on to all the breeder bugs, all of the generation of insects will be born almost human.

I and several other humans were put in charge of taking care of the new Queen and teaching her how humans survive.

So I raised her for four years. As the others eventually tried to kill her and prevent the insects from having their next generation I protected her and they eventually all died out.

Then I met a few human slaves who I used to know and had wronged long ago.

They were strong willed. They had become slaves but they still had their consciousness.

They saw me and attacked. I wasn't hurt too badly but I was the one put in charge of the new queen, so if I got hurt the soldier bugs would think it was an attack on the queen.

When I was found it caused instability in the colony. A lower class slave should not have been able to act on its own so the assault had to have been ordered.

The colony was in chaos. And I had already been arranging for a war with another colony to happen.

Now, I had the chance to put a third colony into the war. And I did so.

I got the blame placed on the insects from Asia and the war was on the line.

I finish it off at the time they Invaded by taking the slaves who had Attacked me and the new queen, and escaping during the confusion of the fight.

The slaves were all used as decoys so that I could get the queen out, I let them be killed without a care for they had been dead ever since they were stung.

With my freedom and the new Queen in hand, I headed for Antarctica. The biggest human base left on the planet.

Once there, I found out that there were two sides fighting. And Australia was staying out of it. Each nation had a Queen and I told them so.

The humans started to fight over whether to attack now or wait until they were worn out. I convinced them that I had lived in their mists and held my own. I hid the fact that the girl was the new Queen. Or that she wasn't even human.

With that, I became a large contributor to the battle front. I had them kill the breeders if they got the chance. And I gave them different scents I had sampled, these allowed them to move while being identified as other insects.

However, it was only until just before the humans made their first big attack, that I could hide the girl. And they found out. They learned of what she was. And wanted her dead.

So I told them, that I had taken her and planted the scents to start the wars. And it was her safty that kept the insects fighting each other.

In the end, we still had to flee the humans as well.

I woke up around there, thinking what a great movie!


	4. Alien Tentacle Spore

**Alien Tentacle Spore**

_For the Sake of Pain_

* * *

When I normally dream of an alien tentacle monster, it usually involves an anime chick, but this, this was just plain CreepShow material.

It all began when I was hanging out with my cousin and his buddies. We met some of his buddies' relations, as it turned out; they were of my higher intellect. (As in they have fun playing video games that don't revolve around vroom vroom cars.) It was from them that we got the invite.

We were invited to a big mansion that had a week long party going on. It was on this big property, and behind it was a mini lake with boat and beach, both full of people. There was a bus for people to go to town in and inside the house were others getting drunk and laid.

I of course went strait to the third floor where all the nerdy geeky types had the electronics. Good bandwidth, high end video-games. _Heaven._

But below, unbeknownst to me a certain some one was looking for their friend, and later it was someone else looking for them. After several hours of playing video games people came up and asked if we had seen them.

We, having no clue who they were, just denied it. But the missing count was going up.

When _**it**_ attacked _it_ blocked off all the exits and ensnared people in motion.

We of course did escape and there were only four of use now, me, my cousin, and two others. Both were of his muscle before brain approach, but when I told him something seriously, he listened; and they listened to him.

We got outside and we saw that we weren't the only ones to escape.

There were cars and trucks that had been crushed by big vines and other obstacles. The whole bus had been full of people who had wanted to go out to the town to look for their friends. And the bus was wrapped in vines, not the big crushing type but average half inch ropes, that spooled into the windows and wrapped around the people inside.

They had all been turned into mummies, again not the toilet paper bandages but the extra crisp firewood type. As if they had been sucked dry.

So we headed for the lake thinking we could get on the boat and _it_ wouldn't reach us there. But when we arrived, we saw that the people there hadn't even noticed _it_ attacking the house. They were still partying.

And so when _it_ struck _it_ crippled the boat and dragged every body in it under the water.

Then tentacles wrapped around the ankles of all the other people in the water and dragged them under too.

It started again, people were being grabbed a dragged away one by one, so we did what was normal. We ran…

But this time there were seven of us to make it out alive. We knew we wouldn't be able to get out with out it grabbing us. So we thought to divert its attention first.

We got all the gas from all but one truck, that truck only had a flat, so it hadn't been driven in a week, and also hadn't been damaged by the vines.

It had a spare, so once we got out far enough we could change it.

We took all the gas and any thing else we could use and covered the house in burnable chemicals.

During this time one of my cousin's friends got lost and two of the others did too.

We lit the fire and ran. The entire place went up in flames. We headed out in the truck.

About a week later, we were there with military backing. They looked through a binocular and saw police cars wrapped up by the huge vines and decided to just bomb it.

There it went.

**Boom.**

And it was finally over.

We were headed back, but as we passed the turn off we saw several of the other military grade vehicles had been up turned and wrapped in vines blocking the road. We were trapped inside!

It was then that I woke and was glad that I at had escaped another horror show, nightmare.


	5. BioCybernetic Virus

**BioCybernetic Virus**

_For the Sake of Pain_

* * *

BioCybernetics is the development of organic computers.

The human brain is the most advanced computer known to mankind.

The study of this was performed in an underground lab sixteen miles west of the Nevada - Arizona border

Too bad for me, I got the job of working on an old mansion in that same area.

We were going to tear out all the rotten stuff and rebuild the interior.

First thing was to clean it out, get rid of all the junk inside it.

Me and another worker were assigned to get the basement and as we went through it we found a plaster wall that had begun falling apart.

Well we naturally thought the same thing, hidden treasure room. And broke the plaster in, finding the expected door we immediately entered.

Heading down in a large underground facility, we found a desolate mass…-grave. It was some post apocalyptic looking sight, everything was ash grey and skulls and bones littered the place.

Then, it was like the place came alive. It was an automated computer system, (like in resident evil.) Well, it resealed the place and began to destroy any air that might have left it out in the mansion.

We naturally freaked and then attempted to bust out. Once in the mansion the computer contacted us and told us quite A-matter-O-fact-ly, that we had to die. For there was an air born pathogen that had been released and would kill off humanity.

It turned out that the virus had been born of a BioCybernetic project. They had found a way to access the processing power of cloned human brains to create a mega computer. And so when a simple computer virus hit the computer-brains had created the biological counterpart for it. Without knowing it they had created the most powerful pathogen to ever exist.

By the time the sickness was identified there was no other option than to quarantine it and allow the mechanical interface computer to develop an anti-virus.

Now the virus was out and it had to be dealt with or the human world would come to an end. The interface had the anti-virus but in order to deploy it, it needed a brain. One that could be converted into the same kind of BioCybernetic computer that had released the virus.

I volunteered and then woke up.


End file.
